Custody in its broadest sense means safe-keeping, guarding, and containment, the inference being that the individual offender is to be protected. However, in the UK, as elsewhere, custody now has wider political and public protection connotations. In England and Wales, the focus of youth custody is on public protection through punishment and offender management. In Scotland, the focus has traditionally been on offender protection, through addressing the young person's broader welfare needs, but recent trends and drivers in youth custody rates in Scotland now paint a different picture (Barry forthcoming; McAra and McVie 2010). The article identifies four key drivers to expanding youth custody rates in Scotland: (i) the earlier criminalization of children and young people; (ii) increasingly stringent requirements imposed on children and young people who offend; (iii) the increased use of remand; and (iv) the use of shorter prison sentences with little scope for rehabilitation. The article concludes that these drivers are themselves driven by the politicization of youth crime in Scotland and the abandonment of traditional Scottish values of minimal intervention and the paramountcy of the child's best interests. (Published Abstract)